In the tumultuous year of 1995, Pres. Boris Yeltsin’s hold on power was challenged on many occasions. He was hospitalized in July with heart trouble and again in October, after returning from New York. The victory of the Communists in the December elections was widely seen as a rejection of the government’s reform policies. All this created the impression that the Yeltsin era was coming to an end and that the president could not stand for reelection in June 1996.

Domestic Affairs

An intense struggle for influence took place during the year among Yeltsin’s aides and ministers. Two main centres of power emerged, the government and its central ministries on the one side and the president and his administration on the other, but many administrative functions overlapped, which promoted inefficient decision making as officials fought for the president’s ear. Another conflict also was raging throughout the country, this one between the pro- and antireform lobbies. Communists and nationalists opposed the government’s commitment to the market economy and democracy and its essentially pro-Western foreign policy stance.

The disastrous war in Chechnya, launched in December 1994, dragged on, and by year’s end no binding peace agreement had been negotiated with the forces of the rebellious Chechen president, Dzhokhar Dudayev. Militarily defeated, the rebels took to the southern hills of Chechnya and launched daring attacks on the occupying Russian forces. In June Chechen rebels penetrated southern Russia and attacked Budennovsk, killing over 100. The rebels had bribed Russian guards to pass through the border. They later took hostages and used them to negotiate their safe return to Chechnya. The Chechen terrorists took their campaign to the heart of Moscow in November by placing a radioactive parcel in a public park and causing great anxiety.

The president and the government were savaged in the State Duma (lower house of the parliament) for their handling of the affair and the Chechen war in general. On June 30 Yeltsin made concessions on the eve of the State Duma’s no-confidence motion in the government by sacking Minister of the Interior Viktor Yerin; Sergey Stepashin, head of the Federal Counterintelligence Service; and Nikolay Yegorov, deputy prime minister responsible for nationality affairs. In the no-confidence vote on July 1, only 193 deputies voted against the government, far short of the 226 needed to carry the motion. This was the most dangerous confrontation with the parliament since the bloody events of October 1993.

On several occasions during the early part of the year, Yeltsin stated that Russian bombardment of Grozny and Russian attacks on stated targets had ceased. Local observers refuted these claims, however, and revealed that the war was continuing. Some commentators took this to mean that the president was not in control of his own armed forces, but the more likely explanation was that the "war party" in Moscow, centred in the Security Council, had a mandate to defeat the Chechens militarily as quickly as possible. Yeltsin maintained that Russia would never negotiate with the "bandit" Dudayev, but his assurances seemed to be for international consumption only. While noting Yeltsin’s erratic behaviour, commentators praised Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin for his flexibility and willingness to compromise.

The war in Chechnya weakened ties between the centre and the non-Russian republics and polarized Russians and non-Russians (about 19% of the population) in a way not seen since 1991. A summit meeting of various republican leaders from the Volga and Urals regions held in Cheboksary, Chuvash Republic, in early January revealed the depth of opposition to the war, especially among Muslims. The meeting condemned the war, demanded its immediate cessation, and criticized Yeltsin, notably for his disinclination to consult with republican leaders. The meeting called for the convening of a "congress of the peoples of Russia" to debate, draft, and take action on national issues. Although the congress had not come into being by the end of the year, the implicit warning that another centre of power, rivaling Moscow and speaking for the regions, could emerge in the future was not lost. The president of the Ingush Republic, which borders Chechnya and was home to many refugees, strongly criticized Russia’s use of force and warned that it could lead in turn to the use of force against Russians throughout the Caucasus. The president of the North Ossetian Republic, on the other hand, welcomed Moscow’s intervention--apparently the only republican leader to do so. The imams everywhere criticized Russia’s military action and attempted to increase feelings of solidarity among Muslims (about 12% of Russia’s population). The leaders of several ethnically Russian oblasts, including Moscow, as well as of Stavropol Kray, criticized the anti-interventionist stance of the Cheboksary summit. Opinion polls in Russia revealed little enthusiasm for the war, and by the summer there was a clear majority in favour of letting Chechnya secede. This paralleled the isolationist feeling in Russia that Chechnya, as well as the now independent republics of Ukraine and Belarus, were millstones around Russia’s neck. There was little sympathy for the 22 million Russians living outside Russia. All this was related to declining living standards in Russia and the belief that Russian policy should concentrate on its domestic agenda.

The political climax of the year was the December 17 elections, which, if only an early act in the much more important drama of the presidential election in the summer of 1996, revealed the depth of popular disenchantment with the reform policies of the government and the erratic performance of President Yeltsin. In the event, the Communists came out on top with 22.3% of the vote, while the ultranationalists of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) were in second place with 11.2%; moderate and reformist parties generally fared poorly. Taken together, three radical parties--the Communists, their Agrarian Party allies, and the LDP--would control over half the seats in the State Duma. The December elections threw the spotlight on likely challengers to Yeltsin for the presidency; Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky, reformist Grigory Yavlinsky (of Yabloko, which won 6.9%), and Prime Minister Chernomyrdin (of the Our Home Is Russia party, 10.1%) were in, as was Lieut. Gen. Aleksandr I. Lebed, the nationalist veteran of the Afghanistan war, who threw his hat in the ring at year’s end even though his party in the elections failed to win seating in the State Duma.

The Economy

The major government objectives--increasing budget revenue, restricting expenditure, and reining in inflation--were, on the whole, achieved. In the first half of the year, the federal budget deficit was only 3.2% of gross domestic product (GDP), below the target agreed with the International Monetary Fund when it made available a $6.5 billion standby loan to Russia. The small deficit was due to increased revenue and lower expenditure than in 1994. In turn, the monthly rate of inflation fell from about 18% in January to 4.5% in October.

On the downside, however, the government was tardy in paying its bills, and there were many strikes resulting from the nonpayment of wages. Cuts in federal subsidies hurt poorer regions, especially those in the north. After falling almost continuously for three years against the dollar, the ruble began to appreciate in May, and from May 4 to August 7 it rose 16%. In July the government and the central bank announced that the ruble would be held within a corridor of 4,300-4,900 to the dollar until October 1, and that date was later extended to the end of the year. Gross foreign exchange reserves reached $10 billion in June, the highest amount since the beginning of reforms. The ruble also appreciated against the currencies of other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Total credits provided by Russia to the CIS climbed to $5.6 billion in mid-1995, and these states were proving quite unable to service the debt. Total CIS and Baltic states shortfall for Russia’s energy supplies was $3.1 billion by July 1.

Wealth was spread unevenly over the country. The Far East, with 5% of the population, reported 8% of national income; the Central region, including Moscow, increased its share in 1995 (20% of the population and 29% of national income), while the Volga region and the North Caucasus had the lowest income figures.

Federal provision for health, social security, and education was proving inadequate. Unemployment climbed to 7.6% of the labour force in July. Benefits were kept low in order to encourage the unemployed to seek new employment rapidly. There was a great increase in the number of Russians with second jobs. In July about 28% of the population was living below the poverty line, compared with 25% in July 1994. The old and the very young were the most seriously affected. Real consumption declined by 6% in the first half of the year compared with the previous year; retail trade was 8% less over the same period. Russia’s GDP fell an estimated 5% in 1995, compared with 15% in 1994.

Agriculture turned in a dismal performance, recording a harvest of about 65 million metric tons of grain and necessitating imports of at least 10 million metric tons. Production figures for meat, poultry, milk, and eggs were significantly down during the first half of the year compared with the same period in 1994, following a steady trend since 1991. Only about 2% of food output came from private farms, which demonstrated that privatization in the countryside was only just beginning.

Privatization of Russia’s state-owned industries encountered some difficulties in early 1995, but in April the government published a list of some 7,000 companies in which it planned to sell its remaining shares. The sales took place between September and December and boosted the second stage of privatization, which involved large companies. Sell-offs were slow during the first half of the year because the government feared that its assets would move at excessively low prices, given the depressed state of the Russian stock market. Initially the government expected revenue of some 9.1 trillion rubles, with 3.6 trillion rubles coming in the first half of the year, but the actual total was 100 billion rubles, partly because over 3,000 of the most attractive Russian companies were excluded from privatization.

Given the need to boost budget revenue, however, the government had second thoughts. In October it announced it would sell 25% of Svyazinvest, a state-owned telecommunications holding company, to an Italian investor for $1.2 billion. The deal fell through on December 25, however. Privatization nevertheless had changed the face of the Russian economy. By April 1995, 73% of industrial enterprises responsible for 85% of total industrial production were in the private sector. In some industries the advance was more spectacular. Practically all companies in ferrous metallurgy were private, and in the fuel industry the figure stood at over 90%.

In housing only 33%, or 11 million, apartments designated for privatization had been sold. Renters were wary of buying, fearing high taxes and repair bills. An increasingly popular method of restructuring enterprises was the formation of financial industrial groups, clusters of enterprises and commercial banks. In July there were 18 such groups in Russia, notably in the metals and automobile sectors.

In July Russia’s first hostile takeover attempt occurred. The bid for the Red October chocolate factory failed, but the suitor, a company controlled by Menatep Bank, was granted two seats on Red October’s board.

In 1995 just over 2,500 commercial banks traded, and 770 possessed licenses to engage in foreign-currency transactions. Bad debts jumped to 20% of total loans in January, however, and this contributed to the first banking crisis in Russia. Panic spread in August as 10 banks acknowledged that they could not repay their loans, and overnight interbank rates reached 1,000%. The crisis was overcome when the Russian central bank bought government bonds to provide liquidity. It seemed clear that some banks would have to be closed, if only because only 20% of the 1,000 joint stock banks met the central bank’s requirement of charter capital over 6 billion rubles. Western banking authorities mentioned these figures as one reason why they would not be granting any Russian bank a banking license in the near future.

Foreign Affairs

Publicly President Yeltsin and U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton got on famously; they met in Moscow in May and in New York in October and enjoyed many telephone conversations as well. Behind the smiles, however, there were several points of friction in the relationship; Russia insisted that it would supply nuclear reactors to Iran, was resolutely opposed to the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, and made clear that its troops would not serve under a NATO general in Bosnia and Herzegovina--much to the U.S.’s chagrin. Russia also went its own way over Cuba, signing an oil-for-sugar deal and promising to finish building a Soviet-era nuclear reactor. Two undiplomatic comments late in the year, in turn, roused Russia’s ire. First, a senior political officer at the U.S. embassy in Moscow published an unflattering article in a Moscow newspaper about the level of democracy in the forthcoming elections. Then, on December 8, Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering told journalists on Sakhalin Island that the U.S. supported Japanese claims in the sensitive Kuril Islands dispute with Russia.

Yeltsin also lacked faith in his own foreign minister, Andrey Kozyrev, for not prosecuting Russia’s interests vigorously enough abroad and went so far as to talk about sacking him in October.

Within the CIS the war in Chechnya sowed distrust of Russia among most states, which resisted entering into a close security arrangement with Moscow; the exception was Kazakhstan. Russian trade with CIS states increased, and Russia obtained stakes in some companies in Ukraine and elsewhere in a debt-for-equity swap. Gazprom, the Russian monopoly gas producer, attempted to gain control over pipelines in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova.

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